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By Mark Hosenball
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In early 1993, it looked as though Henry Cisneros's political career had survived Linda Medlar. The former San Antonio, Texas, mayor breezed through Senate confirmation as the new secretary of housing and urban development (HUD) with scarcely a mention of the 1988 newspaper headlines about the love affair that had left his political career and marriage a shambles. (He has since reconciled with his wife.) Nor was anyone on the Clinton transition team especially concerned about the thousands of dollars in monthly payments he'd been making to Medlar, formerly his campaign fund raiser. Unemployed and financially strapped, she remained silent as Cisneros moved back into public life. But her attitude changed after Cisneros, citing his new public-sector salary, stopped the payments. She sued him in late July for $250,000, charging that he had breached his promise of support. Then she sold two tapes and 140 pages of transcribed telephone conversations with Cisneros from 1992 and '93 to the tabloid TV show "Inside Edition," which aired a story last week. The discussions read like a bleak two-character play, with the ex-lovers sifting the shards of their affair.
But "Inside Edition" may have missed the real story. It's another relationship, described in the transcripts, that could cause Cisneros real trouble. That is his friendship with Morris Jaffe, a wealthy oil and real-estate entrepreneur with a long history as a source of money and favors for Texas politicians from Lyndon Johnson to Jim Wright. (In 1989 Jaffe came under scrutiny from House investigators for inviting Speaker Wright into an extremely profitable oil-well venture at little risk.) Jaffe, 71, a schoolmate of Cisneros's mother, was one of his earliest business supporters. Medlar alleges in one call that Cisneros accepted $10,000 in cash from Jaffe while he was mayor, a charge Cisneros strongly denied to Newsweek.
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But Cisneros told Newsweek that last year he did turn to Jaffe for at least one favor: he asked if Jaffe could help find Medlar a job so she could support herself. According to Cisneros, Jaffe made a couple of unsuccessful attempts to line up a position. Finally, he made Medlar a loan of an undisclosed amount. Cisneros says he never discussed a loan with Jaffe. According to the transcript of a phone call in the fall of 1993, Cisneros was surprised and delighted. "I don't need anything, quite frankly, because [Jaffe] sent me a check," says Medlar. "Jesus," says Cisneros, who laughed and praised Jaffe as "a savior." Jaffe, who declined to speak to Newsweek, confirmed through his secretary that he sent "checks" to Medlar at the request of a "friend" and that he expects to be repaid. Cisneros says that Jaffe, despite his considerable land holdings, has done no business with HUD and that there is nothing improper about his attempt to arrange help for Medlar.
Jaffe's gesture didn't head off what promises to be a messy lawsuit. Medlar, still jobless and living in Lubbock, told Newsweek that she was not out to destroy him. "I'm not trying to do Henry in. I just want to get my daughter through school," Medlar says. There is, as yet, no evidence of illegality on Cisneros's part. But asking a rich and influential friend for help in extricating him from an affair gone sour has given new life to an episode that once nearly derailed his career.
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